[Xmca-l] Re: Indigenous Australian English

[Elizabeth Fein]

This conversation is also making me think of a recently emerging option at
least in English vernacular (I don't know if this is showing up in other
languages): dropping the preposition "of" before an abstract noun in order
to emphasize the authoritative power of the concept itself in the absence
of any specific manifestation.  (i.e. "...because *science*" or "because
*reasons*"). This is a bit different of course because it is a deliberate
grammatical modification to an existing form that calls attention to itself
as such.

Best,
Elizabeth



On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 8:37 AM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it means that Australians are leading the way into a future
> without articles. Actually, very few languages use an article system; as
> you know, Russian does not, and neither does Chinese, Korean, Tibetan or
> Turkish.
>
> As you point out, English doesn't always use articles either. When we
> embed singular nouns in prepositional phrases, the use of the article tends
> to depend on the meaning. Compare "in the morning" with "at night", or "at
> weekend" with "over the the weekend", "down town" with "down the street",
> etc. The usual analysis is that "at night" functions mostly as an adverb
> ("nightwise") while "in the morning" is a minor verb (i.e. a verb with no
> subject but an object). "I go home", "I speak language" and "I spent two
> weeks in hospital/jail/church" can be analyzed in much the same way.
>
> I find it useful to think of articles as part of a whole range of
> prenominal modifiers that go from deictic to defining. So for example when
> my student writes "My mom had to have an urgent C-section surgical
> operation" the "an" part is maximally orienting but minimally defining (it
> just means I am orienting towards it as an instance of something but it
> doesn't say what it's an instance of), the "urgent" part is somewhat less
> orienting and more defining, the "C-section" part is classifying, and
> therefore more defining still, until we come to the part that is maximally
> defining and minimally orienting, "operation". Not only nominal groups but
> verbal groups obey this rule ("had to have", where "had" is tensed because
> it is orienting and locates the speaker in time but "to have" is untensed
> and simply defines the nature of the process). Whole clauses can also be
> seen this way ("My mom" is the deictic part of the clause and "operation"
> is the defining part).
>
> Not all languages do this, because not all languages need to. So for
> example Russian doesn't require this kind of rigid order. Because of those
> pesky cases, so hard for Russian students to master, it is always clear
> who does what to whom by what means, and the order simply doesn't matter.
> Same is true in Latin. This is why I think you miss the point a little when
> you speak of "a perizhivanie" vs. "perizhivanie". That's not how you think
> in Russian.
>
> dk
>
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New Article;
>
>  David Kellogg (2019) THE STORYTELLER’S TALE: VYGOTSKY’S
> ‘VRASHCHIVANIYA’, THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND ‘INGROWING’ IN THE
> WEEKEND STORIES OF KOREAN CHILDREN, British Journal of Educational
> Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200
> <https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200>
>
>
> Some e-prints available at:
>
>
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GSS2cTAVAz2jaRdPIkvj/full?target=10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 8:57 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>
>> While we have the attention of some linguists .... Indigenous Australians
>> have a way of using certain specific words, for example, country, culture,
>> language, community, which in English we usually use with a personal
>> pronoun, as in "I can speak your language," or article, "is this the
>> country you come from?" as if they were countable nouns, but which
>> Indigenous Australians use without an article or personal pronoun, as in "I
>> went to country" or "when I speak language ...," much like the word "home"
>> which can be used without the "my" or "your."
>>
>> This usage conveys a meaning which is generally understood, but is used
>> only in relation to the Indigenous people. I understand it. But I find it
>> hard to put into words what is actually being done when words are used like
>> this. I use words like "science" or "religion" in the same way, I guess.
>> What does it mean linguistically??
>>
>> Andy
>> --
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20190315/fed6837c/attachment.html